John H Watson MD

Category: Broadcasters

  • Behind every great man is an even greater woman, demanding rent

    Following the success of their book, Mrs Hudson’s Diaries: A View from the Landing at 221B: Behind the Apron with Sherlock Holmes’ Land Lady, the writers Barry and Bob Cryer, brought Mrs Hudson (played by Patricia Hodge) on to the radio in her own series (well, two episodes, anyway).

    As Dr Watson was reminded by the good lady many times, she was their landlady – not their housekeeper, and in the BBC Sherlock series, viewers were also reminded of Mrs Hudson’s standing. She has always been “an independent woman, who was taking advantage of the change in the law that allowed a widow to inherit her husband’s property for the first time” as Bob Cryer points out.

    The radio cast with Barry Cryer, Bob Cryer, Ruth Bratt, Miriam Margolyes, Patricia Hodge, Orlando Wells, Stephen Critchlow and Jeremy Limb

    The writers suggested that the radio series may move to television but that now seems less likely with the sad passing of Barry Cryer.

    The two episodes are listed on the BBC website but the recordings are not currently available. To whet your appetite for when they do become available, here are the synopses of the two episodes.

    Episode 1 – A Rare Medium

    When her tenant, a magician known as The Great Mysto, goes missing, Mrs Hudson is suddenly in urgent need of rent money and new lodgers.

    This half hour episode sees Mrs Hudson attempting to reclaim her lost money and encountering everything from crooked showgirls and Music Hall eccentrics to German strongmen and dodgy clairvoyants. Meanwhile, Mrs Hudson’s maid Martha (Ruth Bratt) has secretly advertised for new tenants and it’s not long before a doctor (Stephen Critchlow) and a consulting detective (Orlando Wells) come knocking.

    Time is not on her side as villainous Sir Charles Swift is ready to swoop and reclaim her house if she doesn’t pay her ground rent.

    Episode 2 – Wild Geese

    In this second episode, a dead goose and a battered hat are found by Inspector Lestrade (Bob Cryer) lying in the middle of Baker Street. It’s not long before Mrs Hudson is leading her friends out into the night on a very silly seasonal adventure.

    However, one thing you can be sure of, Sherlock Holmes (Orlando Wells) and Dr Watson (Stephen Critchlow) are never far away and usually ahead of the game.

    So come in from the cold, turn on the wireless and make a date with Mrs Hudson.

    But don’t forget to wipe your feet first.

    Did I say it was a comedy?

  • Jeremy Brett

    For some people, Jeremy Brett, will always be the Sherlock Holmes. He portrayed Holmes over 40 times in what the creator of the Granada Series, Michael Cox, meant to be the genuine article. 

    There was a dangerous and eccentric edge to his playing of the role which fascinated men and attracted women. His portrayal included some mannerisms that are so uncannily similar to those that are described of Holmes in the original stories. 

    The programmes spanned six series plus five feature-length episodes and a short episode broadcast as part of Telethon ‘92. The latter has never been officially released though it is available on the Internet. 

    The whole project started with the best intentions – of keeping true to the stories as Watson had recounted them – but the commercial considerations of the powers that be at Granada and Jeremy’s failing health meant that the promise was not to be fully realised. 

    Some liberties were taken with the Canon. For instance, it was decided that Watson should not be married. So at the end of The Sign of Four, Mary and Watson go their separate ways. 

    In The Mazarin Stone (from The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes), the penultimate episode to be shown, Jeremy was too ill for filming having collapsed at the end of filming , sadly somewhat prophetically, The Dying Detective (from His Last Bow). The script was rewritten using Holmes’ brother Mycroft in his place. The script also includes elements of the Three Garridebs (from The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes) with the result that David Stuart Davies (see below) calls it “a mess”. There was also a lost opportunity to bring in the poignant moment from The Three Garridebs where Holmes thinks that Watson has been shot. Mycroft also appears to take Watson’s role in The Golden Pince-Nez (from The Return of Sherlock Holmes). 

    Two of the feature-length episodes strayed too far from the Canon for most people’s liking. These were The Last Vampyre (based perhaps too loosely on The Sussex Vampire from The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes) and The Eligible Bachelor (based on The Noble Bachelor from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes). 

    The Hound of the Baskervilles was another two-hour episode that was so disappointing that Jeremy Brett wanted to do it again. David Stuart Davies refers to the hound jokingly with a reference to Silver Blaze as “the dog that did nothing in the ratings”. The Sign of Four was the only feature length episode that provided a creditable performance. 

    In the midst of all this, in 1988 and 1989, Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke toured with a stage play entitled The Secret of Sherlock Holmes in which it is proposed that Moriarty is just a figment of Holmes fevered brain. 

    You can judge for yourself as the Granada series is available on DVD as Sherlock Holmes – Complete Collection. 

    If you want to know more about Jeremy Brett, his life and career, I can recommend two books. The first is my favourite as it’s written by someone who knows Holmes and Watson very well, David Stuart Davies, Bending The Willow. There is a revised 2022 edition now available (but not yet on Amazon). David’s enthusaism for Holmes led him to become a founding member of The Northern Mugraves Sherlock Holmes Society. He has also published Holmes of the Movies surveying the Great Detective on film. 

    The second is The Man Who Became Sherlock Holmes by Terry Manners – his first foray into the world of Holmes. 

    None of these books appear to be available new so you will need to consult a good second-hand bookseller to obtain a copy – or maybe your local library. The Sherlockian holds further information about Jeremy Brett as Holmes.

    Few people realise that one other person called Brett also portrayed Holmes. It would be an erudite scholar who knew the answer to that little puzzle! 

  • An Experiment in Stereophonic Sound

    Early experiments

    From the earliest days, the BBC was experimenting with stereophonic sound. But in the late 1950s, these experiments became a full-scale programme of broadcasts, in stereo, of music and drama. One of these broadcasts, in November 1958, was of a specially-written play, “Scenes from Sherlock Holmes”, itself based on the play “Sherlock Holmes”, written by William Gillette, famously with permission from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. No recordings of the test transmission are known to exist, but again we have an example of the BBC pioneering new technology and bringing Sherlock Holmes to the public in an innovative format.

    Test transmissions

    The story of stereophonic broadcasting by the BBC began in the 1920s with test transmissions of opera from The Opera House, Covent Garden, in London. There was no means of broadcasting two channels over a single network station in those days, so the left channel was transmitted over the 2LO frequency and the right over the Daventry frequency. Anyone wanting to listen to the broadcast would need two radio sets that were in range of both transmitters.

    Headphones (binaural) sound

    Writing in Wireless World in June 1958 about these early experiments, Capt. H J Round, says that they had no idea if anyone heard their broadcasts, but that they gave valuable insight into the difference between listening to stereo from loudspeakers and from headphones. The location of broadcast sounds heard from loudspeakers matched the location of the original sounds in relation to the placement of the microphones, whereas the location of sounds in headphones seemed to be partially determined by their frequency. A soprano voice (high frequency) seemed to come from in front of the listener, but the orchestra (mixed frequencies) came from behind. Male voices (low frequency) also appeared to come from behind with the orchestra. More bizarrely, someone walking from the left microphone to the right microphone appeared to walk over the listener’s head rather across in front – but this only when listening on headphones.

    Sherlock Holmes

    What this has to do with Sherlock Holmes will not be obvious at this stage but, about twenty years later, in 1978, the BBC was again experimenting using Sherlock Holmes stories, broadcast in “binaural sound” specially engineered to the be listened to with stereo headphones. A future article on the Barry Foster/David Buck Sherlock Holmes Series first broadcast in 1978 will explain further.

    By the late 1950s, many people had a television set as well as a radio, and the BBC’s experiments could reach a wider audience by using the television broadcast channel for the right-hand channel and the radio for the left. Such a series of experiments were carried out over two and a half years from January 1958. Not all of these broadcasts are listed on the BBC’s Genome database, perhaps because they were broadcast only in the south and the regional versions of the Radio Times used to populate the Genome database are not always from the south. The earliest listings of “Stereophony” broadcasts in the Genome database are from July 1959 but a full list of the broadcasts is given in a BBC Engineering Department report from 1961.

    This lists a variety of programmes, mainly consisting of orchestral music, but listed for 1st and 2nd October 1958 is a drama entitled in the report simply “Sherlock Holmes”, performed at Broadcasting House, Studio 6A. These dates may be rehearsals, recording sessions, or actual broadcasts but the only reference to the public hearing these programmes appear in the Daily Express for 12th November 1958 where listeners are promised, on Saturday 15th between 10:15am and 11:15am, the sounds of a “knife whizzing right across the room, the passing hansom cab, [and] the sound of Holmes’s violin at one side of his study as Watson enters through the door at the other.”

    Having your listening equipment set up correctly was important and the BBC printed this guidance in the Radio Times:

    Raymond Raikes

    But what of the programme itself? For his 1899 play, the American actor, William Gillette, had asked Arthur Conan Doyle for permission to adapt some of Holmes’s stories for the stage. He telegraphed Conan Doyle asking “May I marry Holmes?” and Conan Doyle famously responded, “You may marry or murder or do what you like with him”. It appears that Gillette’s play, which introduced some novel elements of its own (the curved pipe, which has become iconic, though Holmes never used one to my knowledge) was chosen for this new presentation by one of the BBC’s most innovative producers, Raymond Raikes.

    Raikes had a reputation with the BBC’s listeners for delivering “a spirited production of the highest quality which would be both hugely entertaining and probably educative. It would also be directed with utmost professionalism and incorporate the latest developments in sound technology”.

    He had produced a programme based on Gillette’s play for the BBC Home Service on 3rd January 1953. This starred Carleton Hobbs as Holmes and Norman Shelley as Watson. The programme lasted ninety minutes so must have been shortened to fit into the sixty minutes for the stereophonic broadcast. Whether this utilised a recording, the same actors in a live performance, or other actors is not known. The fact a studio was used implies a live performance. The programme is also referred to elsewhere as “Scenes from Sherlock Holmes” implying some abridgement of the original broadcast.

    Although Raikes maintained a prodigious output for the BBC, including the station’s experimental quadrophonic broadcasts in 1974, he never produced another Sherlock Holmes story for the BBC.

    An update to this story appears in the Winter 2022 edition of The Sherlock Holmes Journal, published by the Sherlock Holmes Society of London.

    References

    Operational Research on Studio Techniques in Stereophony, BBC Engineering Division, October 1961

    The influence of loudspeaker directivity and orientation on the effective audience area in two-channel stereophonic reproduction, BBC Engineering Division, January 1963

  • Miniature Biographies: Dr Watson


    The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes at the BBC – Episode 1

    Background

    Although the first broadcast of a Sherlock Holmes case was not until 1938 (Detectives In Fiction 1. Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of Silver Blaze), there were a number of Holmes-related programmes prior to that story.

    The first of these was a Miniature Biography of Dr Watson, broadcast at 9.20pm on Wednesday 4th December 1929 on the BBC 2LO London station and at the same time and day on the BBC 5XX Daventry station. 

    Early BBC transmitters

    At this point, early in the BBC history, these were the two principal broadcasting stations. The BBC 2 LO transmitter was in The Strand in London. The BBC acquired it from Marconi and its name came from the number of the Post Office licence issued to Marconi. This transmitter is now preserved at the Science Museum in London. The original transmitter was replaced by a more powerful one in the Selfridges building in London’s Oxford Street in 1925, but still using the 2LO call sign. It closed down in 1930 when a number of local stations were replaced by the BBC Regional Programme. 2LO was also used by John Logie Baird for some of the early television tests.

    The BBC 5XX transmitter at Daventry, opened in July 1925, and was the world’s first Long Wave  transmitting station. It covered 94% of the population and was in continuous use until 1992 and is now part of the BBC’s DAB radio network. As a radio station, it was replaced in 1920 by the BBC National Programme.

    Miniature Biography series

    The advance announcement of the Miniature Biography series in the Radio Times indicated that the biographies might be either real or imaginary. The six programmes planned to cover William Fletcher, Dorothy Wordsworth, Dr Watson, A Witch, Lady Caroline Lamb, Father Christmas, and Mrs Grundy.  Dorothy Wordsworth did not appear but in her place was Beau Brummell. Lady Caroline Lamb, was due to be broadcast on Christmas Day, also failed to appear altogether, and Father Christmas, or more properly, Santa Klaus was heard on Boxing Day (he was presumably busy the day before). 

    The remaining six talks were published in The Listener – the BBC’s weekly magazine that aimed to be “a medium for intelligent reception of broadcast programmes by way of amplification and explanation of those features which cannot now be dealt with in the editorial columns of the Radio Times.

    Desmond MacCarthy

    The biography of Dr Watson was presented by Desmond MacCarthy (1877-1952) who was associated with the Bloomsbury group, a group of English writers, philosophers, and artists who met between 1907 and 1930 in the  Bloomsbury district of London. 

    MacCarthy began his career as a freelance journalist, moving to editorial work, drama critic, literary editor, weekly columnist and literary critic. As weekly columnist for the New Statesman known as the “Affable Hawk,” he gained a reputation for erudition, sensitive judgment, and literary excellence. He gave a number of literary talks for the BBC and the Miniature Biography of Dr Watson was one of these. He was no stranger to Sherlock Holmes and was awarded Honorary Membership of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London for his contributions to Sherlockian literature.

    Dr Watson

    In MacCarthy’s broadcast Miniature Biography, he tantalises us by stating that he has “elected to open up my forthcoming and profusely illustrated biography of him in the modern fashion”. This “modern fashion” to which he refers, is the embellishment of a biography with surmise and imagination rather than pure fact. “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact” says Sherlock Holmes in The Boscombe Valley Mystery.

    There is, of course, no such biography available, though a few have tried, most notably perhaps, Vincent Starrett in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1933) , June Thomson in Holmes and Watson: A Study in Friendship (1995) , and Nick Rennison in Sherlock Holmes: The Unauthorized Biography (2005).

    In his account, a twenty-minute talk for which each presenter was paid 50 Guineas inclusive of publication in The Listener, MacCarthy deduces Dr Watson’s year of birth to be 1854 but reveals little that could not be ascertained by anyone studying the Canon. The full text of his talk can be found in The Listener Historical Archive and in Editor James Edward Holroyd’s Seventeen Steps to 221B: A Sherlockian Collection by English Writers  (see References).

    References

    BBC Genome www.genome.ch.bbc.co.uk. BBC historical listings information from 1923 to the present day.

    Doyle, Arthur Conan, The Boscombe Valley Mystery, in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, first published in the Strand Magazine in 1891.

    Holroyd, James Edward, editor, Seventeen Steps to 221B: A Sherlockian Collection by English Writers, 1967

    Rennison, Nick, Sherlock Holmes: The Unauthorized Biography, 2005

    “Sir Desmond MacCarthy: 1877-1952,” The Sherlock Holmes Journal 1, no. 2, (September 1952),

    Starrett, Vincent, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, 1933

    The Listener Historical Archive. Web. Contains the text of all six biographies. Access to the archive is available through some libraries.

    Thomson, June, Holmes and Watson: A Study in Friendship, 1995

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